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him to be a fool like you.’
    ‘Madame!’ Roland protested again.
    Genevieve spat. ‘Seven years ago, when Bertille was twelve years old, she was carried to Labrouillade and married to him. He was thirty-two then and he wanted her dowry. What choice did she have? She was twelve!’
    ‘She is lawfully married, before God.’
    ‘To a disgusting creature whom God would spit on.’
    ‘She is his wife,’ Roland insisted, yet he felt exquisitely uncomfortable. He wished he had never taken this quest, but he had, and honour demanded it must be seen through to its end and so they rode northwards. They stayed at a tavern in the marketplace of Gignac, and Roland insisted on sleeping just outside the chamber where Genevieve slept. His squire shared the vigil. Roland’s squire was a clever fourteen-year-old, Michel, whom Roland was training in the ways of chivalry. ‘I don’t trust the Count of Labrouillade’s men,’ Roland told the boy, ‘especially not Jacques, so we sleep here with our swords.’ The count’s man had been eyeing the fair-haired Genevieve all day, and Roland had heard the laughter behind him and suspected the men-at-arms were discussing his captive, but they made no attempt to get past Roland during the night, and next morning they rode northwards and joined the high road heading towards Limoges while Genevieve tormented Roland by suggesting that her husband would have escaped Montpellier.
    ‘He’s difficult to capture,’ she said, ‘and terrible in revenge.’
    ‘I do not fear fighting him,’ Roland said.
    ‘Then you’re a fool. You think your sword will protect you? Do you call it Durandal?’ She laughed when he reddened, for he obviously did. ‘But Thomas has a span of dark-painted yew,’ she said, ‘and a cord of hemp with arrows of peeled white ash. Have you ever faced an English archer?’
    ‘He will fight courteously.’
    ‘Don’t be such a fool! He’ll cheat you and trick you and deceive you, and at the end of the fight you’ll be as stuck full of arrows as a brush has bristles. He might already be ahead of you! Maybe the archers are waiting on the road? You won’t see them. The first you’ll know is the strike of the arrows, then the screams of horses and the death of your men.’
    ‘She’s right,’ Jacques Sollière put in.
    Roland smiled bravely. ‘They will not shoot, lady, for fear of hitting you.’
    ‘You know nothing! At two hundred paces they can pick the snot out of your nose with an arrow. They’ll shoot.’ She wondered where Thomas was. She feared that the church would seize her again. She feared for her son.
    The next night was spent in a monastery’s guest house, and again Roland guarded her threshold. There was no other way from the room, no escape. On the road, before they reached the monastery, they had passed a group of merchants with armed guards, and Genevieve had called out to them, saying she had been captured against her will. The men had looked worried until Roland, with his calm courtesy, had said she was his sister and moon-touched. He said the same thing whenever Genevieve appealed to passers-by. ‘I take her to a place where she might be treated by holy nuns,’ he said, and the merchants had believed him and passed on.
    ‘So you’re not above telling lies,’ she had mocked him.
    ‘A lie in God’s service is no lie.’
    ‘And this is God’s service?’
    ‘Marriage is a sacrament. My life is dedicated to God’s service.’
    ‘Is that why you’re a virgin?’
    He blushed at that, then frowned, but still answered the question seriously. ‘It was revealed to me that my strength in battle rests on purity.’ He paused to glance at her. ‘It was the Virgin Mary who spoke to me.’
    Genevieve had been mocking him, but something in his tone checked her scorn. ‘What did she say?’
    ‘She was beautiful,’ Roland said wistfully.
    ‘And she spoke to you?’
    ‘She came down from the chapel ceiling,’ he said, ‘and told me I must live a chaste life until I marry. That God would bless me. That I was chosen. I was only a boy then, but I was chosen.’
    ‘You had a dream.’ Genevieve sounded dismissive.
    ‘A vision,’ he corrected her.
    ‘A boy dreams of a beautiful woman,’ Genevieve said, the scorn back in her voice, ‘that’s no vision.’
    ‘And she touched me and told me I must stay pure.’
    ‘Tell that to the arrow that kills you,’ she had said, and Roland had fallen silent.
    Now, on the third day of